NEW YORK — Yale University researchers are on your mom’s side when it comes to fighting a cold: put on a sweater.
The immune system doesn’t combat cold viruses as well at lower temperatures, according to an early study in mice published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Doctors have understood for decades that temperature affects the way cold viruses reproduce. Akiko Iwasaki, a Yale professor of immunobiology who led the study, now has research, as well as motherly intuition, to bolster the case for staying warm that many moms have made to their kids.
“Fashion goes out the window when it comes to protecting my children,” Iwasaki said. “I bundle them up and they don’t like it. As a mother and as a scientist, it’s my duty to do that.”
Researchers at Yale in New Haven, Conn., introduced rhinovirus, the prime cause of the common cold, and monitored the immune response in cells from the airways of mice incubated at core human body temperature and at cooler temperature. They found that low temperatures suppressed the cells’ ability to detect viruses, as well as their mechanism for alerting the immune system, allowing viruses more freedom to replicate.
In cells that had a genetically compromised immune response, the virus thrived equally in warm and cool environments, according to the study.
“The virus can replicate better because the alarm signal is turned off,” Iwasaki said. “If you remove the sensor or the signal, then the virus can replicate at even the higher temperature.”
The most common human illness, colds are the main reason that children miss school and adults miss work, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Iwasaki will next try the experiment with human cells.
